Unfiltered Koroneiki Olive Oil from a 300-Year-Old Cretan Grove
eliato
Natural Koroneiki olive oil from our 300-year-old family grove in Mirabello Bay, Crete
Shop NowArticles on Koroneiki olive oil, the Mediterranean diet, polyphenols, our family grove in the Kritsa Valley, and the wider story of single-estate Greek olive oil. Read our latest pieces below or return to the shop.
Yes, you can cook with extra virgin olive oil. A producer explains why the smoke point myth is misleading, what oxidative stability really means, and how EVOO performs under heat.
An honest, sourced verdict on single-estate olive oil versus supermarket blends: when the premium is justified, when a cheap bottle is the smarter buy, and what to actually check on the label.
No home test can prove your bottle is genuine extra virgin, but a printed harvest date, a single origin and a peppery finish can stack the odds heavily in your favour. Here is the buyer's checklist, plus why the fridge and lamp tests fail.
What gives Koroneiki olive oil its peppery bite, why that bite signals quality, and how to read a label so you buy the good stuff.
What high polyphenol olive oil actually is, what the EU health claim really says, why fresh early-harvest oil makes you cough, and how to judge if it is worth paying for.
A producer's honest comparison of unfiltered and filtered olive oil, covering cloudiness, sediment, flavour, polyphenols and shelf life, with a plain verdict on which to buy.
Hippocrates prescribed olive oil for over 60 conditions. Dioscorides, Galen, Avicenna, and Hildegard of Bingen all championed it. Twenty-five centuries later, researchers are still finding new reasons they were right.
In Homer's epics, olive oil isn't just a background detail — it's a force of transformation, fidelity, and divine power. From Odysseus's anointing to his marriage bed carved from a living olive trunk, the tree is woven into the very fabric of Greek heroic literature.
From Samuel anointing David with oil to Muhammad's teaching that the olive comes from a blessed tree, the olive has occupied a sacred place in both Christianity and Islam for millennia.
The ancient Olympic Games weren't just about glory — they were about olive oil. From sacred wreaths cut with golden sickles to prizes worth thousands of litres, olive oil was the currency of athletic excellence.
The strongest figure in Greek mythology chose a tree over metal. From the wild olive ripped from Mount Helikon to the groves he planted at Olympia, Hercules and the olive share a surprising bond.
King Cecrops judged two gifts on the Acropolis — Poseidon's salt spring and Athena's olive tree. The twelve Olympians voted, and the tree that would define a civilisation won.
In June 1944, 71 Allied aircraft struck a German supply convoy heading for Crete. The mission's codename — Operation Olive Oil — reveals how completely the island's identity had merged with its most famous product, even in the minds of foreign military planners.
Long before Marseille became synonymous with fine soap, Crete was producing it at industrial scale.
Crete produces roughly a third of all Greek olive oil, yet for decades most of it vanished into anonymous bulk shipments. A new generation of producers is changing that, turning ancient groves into sources of internationally awarded, scientifically traceable extra virgin olive oil.
When centuries-old olive trees stop bearing fruit, Cretan craftsmen transform the wood into objects of striking beauty. The tradition reveals an island where nothing from the olive tree is wasted.
A 15-metre sediment core from beneath Crete's only freshwater lake reveals three distinct waves of olive cultivation across ten millennia — and an unprecedented biodiversity collapse in the last century.
Greece leads the world in olive oil consumption at roughly 24 litres per capita, but Crete surpasses even the national average. On this island, olive oil is not a condiment — it is the structural foundation of almost every meal.
Each autumn, Crete's thirty million olive trees call the island's scattered families home. The harvest that follows is one of Europe's last great communal agricultural rituals.
A cup of preserved olive flesh at Zakros and Europe's oldest olive presses at Vathypetro together rewrite the timeline of Mediterranean food production.
How eighteen narrow storerooms beneath the western wing of Knossos revealed that Minoan Crete ran on olive oil -- stored, measured, and redistributed on an industrial scale.
When Michael Ventris deciphered Linear B in 1952, he unlocked Bronze Age accounting records that revealed a sophisticated olive oil grading system — distinct ideograms for different oil grades, monthly rations to named gods, and a palace economy built on liquid gold.
In 1967, archaeologist Peter Warren excavated a Cretan hilltop settlement and found clay vats with channelled spouts dating to 2600 BC — the oldest known olive oil production equipment. Four millennia before the term existed, the Minoans were already making extra virgin.